Finding Faith. C. E. Edmonson

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СКАЧАТЬ if her mother had told her that she was part Martian.

      “What? How?” she asked.

      “My mother. She was part Ojibwa and part Lenape Indian. The Lenape are also called the Delaware, but that’s a name given to them by the settlers who drove them out. They never use it themselves.” Margaret Covington stopped long enough to shake her head and squeeze Faith’s hand. “This is very hard for me.”

      “After what we’ve been through, I don’t see how anything can be hard,” Faith said.

      Margaret laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

      “And that’s another thing, Mom. After all we’ve been through, I’m not a baby.”

      “Okay, fine. You’ve got to grow up and this is part of the process. My mother passed away when you were an infant and my father went back to his hometown in South Dakota, so you never got to know them. But your grandmother was an Indian and your grandfather was Scotch-Irish.”

      “How did they get married then?”

      “Does that seem impossible? People fall in love, Faith, even people from different races.” Margaret paused, but Faith didn’t reply. “Anyway, your grandmother chose the modern way. She grew up on a reservation, but she rejected Indian life, for the most part.”

      “For the most part?”

      “Grandma had a sister, Eva, who took the opposite course. Eva chose to live in the Indian way, or as close to it as she could manage. I spent several summers with her...”

      “Wait a minute. You’re talking about Aunt Eva? The one who’s taking us in?”

      The train’s whistle sounded and the train began to slow as they approached a station. Faith read the sign, TEANECK, as they came to a stop by a stationhouse much smaller than any they’d seen before. As if cued by a movie director, a dozen men emerged from an encampment several hundred yards away. They carried trays on straps hung around their necks and moved from window to window, offering apples and nuts and skinny sandwiches. “Shabby” didn’t begin to describe these men. Their clothes were dirty and, for the most part, they were unshaven. One man’s shoes were held together with string. Another wore a hat without a brim.

      Windows began to shut as soon as the men appeared, but Faith was intrigued. If nobody wanted to buy their goods, why did the men even bother? Her mother didn’t close her window, but she didn’t offer to buy anything, either.

      “They’re afraid.” Margaret said, without any prompting.

      Faith shuddered. There were times when she was sure her mother could read her mind. “Who’s afraid?”

      Margaret gestured to the other passengers.

      “Do they think the men will hurt them?”

      “No, they’re afraid that what happened to these men will happen to them, too. Keep in mind, not all that long ago, these men probably had jobs and families. Now they’ve lost everything.” Margaret’s mouth tightened as she thought of her own husband. Struggling to maintain her composure, she nodded to herself. “Some people think poverty is contagious. They try to keep as far away from it as possible.”

      A man limped up to the window, an old man; what was left of his hair was now snow white. He was gaunt, with flaring cheekbones and hollow cheeks, and his thin lips were spread in a humorless smile that revealed several missing teeth.

      “Buy an apple, ma’am? Help out an old veteran. Only five cents.”

      Margaret went into her purse, found a coin and laid it on the man’s tray. She started to take an apple, but changed her mind. They were too bruised to be eaten.

      “Bless you, ma’am.” His voice trailed off as he moved to the next window. “Bless you.”

      A moment later, two railroad policemen ambled out of the stationhouse. Seeing them, the peddlers began to move away. The drama seemed to take place in slow motion, as though all concerned were acting parts in a play they’d performed many times before.

      A man sitting in front of Faith turned to the woman sitting next him. “What these bums need,” he declared, “is a swift kick in the pants.”

      “Yes, dear,” the woman said, tilting her head in the man’s direction. “Whatever you say.”

      Faith giggled. How to get along with an obnoxious husband was a frequent topic of conversation among her and her friends. Never disagree, that was one way. Men need to be in charge, the reasoning went, or at least think they’re in charge.

      “Mom, why didn’t you tell me this before? About you—about us—being Indian?”

      “Part Indian,” Margaret corrected. “But that’s not really the point. I was raised as an ordinary American, except for those summers with Aunt Eva on her farm. And when I became old enough to make a choice for myself, I chose the American way of life. Aunt Eva wouldn’t put it that way. She says that I chose the white man’s way of life. As though I was some kind of traitor.”

      Faith looked past her mother, out the window. They were passing through farm country now and the carefully tended fields stretched to the horizon. Cows grazed on a hillside. In a fenced paddock, a foal pranced on unsteady legs. Faith watched it trip, fall, get up and trip again. The little horse didn’t seem to mind, as its mother didn’t seem to notice.

      “You’ll have to work,” Margaret said.

      “What?”

      “Everybody works on the farm.”

      “Even the children?”

      Margaret smiled. “I thought you said that you weren’t a child.”

      “I’m not.” Faith shifted in her seat. “What kind of work?”

      “Whatever Aunt Eva tells you to do.”

      “Aunt Eva’s in charge?”

      “Oh, yes, my daughter. It’s Aunt Eva’s farm.”

      “What about her husband? Does she have children?” Now that Faith had a chance to adjust, her curiosity was running ahead of her tongue.

      “Aunt Eva’s a widow, and her children have moved away. They’ve chosen the white man’s life, something you don’t want to mention to Aunt Eva. But even when Uncle Jonas was alive, Aunt Eva ran the farm. That’s another thing about the Indian way. In the old times, women were completely in charge of the farming. Men built the houses, which the women then owned, and they hunted for meat, but women planted and tended the crops. Without them, the people would have starved.” Margaret hesitated before adding, “That’s what the name Lenape means. ‘The people.’”

      Faith sat back in her seat, her thoughts flying through her head like swirling searchlights at the opening of a Broadway premiere. Indians? The Indian way of life? What was it all about?

      Thomas Covington loved westerns and he’d taken his daughter to watch dozens of them. Over the years, Faith had seen just about every western actor in Hollywood. Bob Steele and Tom Mix, Randolph Scott, Walter Houston, and Gary Cooper—there СКАЧАТЬ